


It's Bread

by rjn



Category: Sorted (Website) RPF
Genre: Gen, Humor, James' Arms reference for those of you into that sort of thing, James/Bread if we're honest, James/Ebbers if you really want it to be, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 04:22:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20669258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: James' latest obsession is the perfect baguette. That's not even a euphemism.





	It's Bread

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing the proud tradition of posting to the most random selection of fandoms.

He’s always baking. Heavy grain-specked loaves are his signature, coaxed from meticulously sourced flours (hand-milled by so-and-so in such-and-such region), fed and fermented, warmed and rounded. James makes dark breads, hearty textured things that make a meal of themselves. Food that suits him, workmanlike on the surface but with a quality of the epicurean. Lately, however, James is obsessively reproducing baguettes. Almost exclusively. He’s weeks into it, measuring and weighing subtly different combinations of yeasts and flours, his printed recipe covered with tidy notation in pencil.

The boys have stopped asking him what the baguette thing is all about. They assume he’s encountered some elusive variation that he needs to recreate and claim. _The James approach._ While Ben can be counted on to describe anything and everything he ever eats with words and analogies with familiar flavours, there’s always a sense of the scholarly to it. He’s tried something, read something or been told something, and with his steel trap mind, he’s retained it all in an orderly verbal sense that translates perfectly for sharing with others. James is something altogether more tactile. He has to make the thing himself and feed people to pass the experience along. The _experience_ is the thing, from the moment he finds an inspiration to the moment he places the loaf into privileged hands, he’s passing along something sacred to him. It has to be felt, used, tasted.

And that’s the funniest part of his recent fixation. James doesn’t even taste most of the finished baguettes. He doesn’t offer them around, either. Most of his prized bread, until recently, he would hand off to Sorted staffers to take home, sometimes with a swiftly assembled spread of his design for accompaniment. But the baguettes, dozens over the past few weeks, have almost all gone directly into the carefully packed boxes for delivery to the soup kitchen.

Baguettes are a wet dough, managed best by machinery, so in the evenings James lines up three stand mixers to greet him in the morning. He sets them to work on the day’s variations, and only personally handles the dough enough to shape the loaves. Even so, he’s done so many of late that his hands are flour-desiccated in a way he’s not had since culinary school, with all its punitive and unnecessary hand kneading. It had got so bad that the boys have started to notice. Baz and Mike notice enough to comment on it, because, as Mike puts it, _James is a handsy bastard_, always some gym-hardened arm slung over somebody’s shoulder.

He’s petting Barry’s face one day, expecting the usual Baz shriek (probably something about how he’s got a pimple and the last thing he needs is greasy haggis fingers on his skin, the sort of thing he usually says despite continuing on nestled contentedly close to James.)

“What’s with your hands, mate?”

Before James can ask what is meant by that, Mike is chiming in.

“Yeah. Your paws zested the back of my neck this morning, you mummified freak.”

And so, a new step is triggered in the process. Once the bread is slid into the waiting oven, and James brushes and washes the flour off himself, he applies hand cream. A truly _pretentious _cream, naturally, scented of rosemary and subtle orange, like James can’t bear to associate himself with anything artificial, or indeed, inedible. Jamie gets hold of the product eventually (James is particular about leaving it out of his bag, worried about spillage and contamination, and so the tube generally sits in plain sight) and delights in reading the _crème pour mains _label copy for everyone in a flouncy Pepe le Pew: _rafraîchissante!_

When he doesn’t return the moisturizer, James purposefully replaces it with the_ pamplemousse-menthe_ variety, to give Jamie the opportunity for another hilarious take.

It’s not his fault when the motor gives out on one of the Kenwoods, (there had been non-intended use of the machine involving the rapid unspooling of toilet roll and assorted lolz) but James eventually relegates the obsessive baguette production to his flat on the weekends all the same. This is why, when he arrives midweek and starts his process _– thirty minutes of yeast activation before the salt is allowed near, first round of proofing in a wood bowl, tea towel draped over oven controls to prevent anyone interrupting the rise with renegade preheating—_ people take notice.

-

“Bread man is breading again.”

“With fervour.”

“He doesn’t even look massively disappointed.”

“It’s still early.”

“No, look. He’s got that self-satisfied little grin.”

“Grinning gingers are the worst.”

“Gringers.”

“Creepy.”

“Revolting.”

“Extremely smug.”

“Like the time we thought Ebbers might have lost his virginity.”

“James looked smug and you therefore thought that Ebbers had—”

“No, when _Ebbers_ looked smug. Similarly. That level of smugness. We thought maybe he’d finally lost his virginity.”

“Not necessarily to James.”

"Not necessarily _not_ to James."

“So. What you’re actually telling us, then, is that James is going to fuck those baguettes.”

“No! I didn’t say that!”

“Well. I mean. Look at his stupid face, though.”

“Oh, thank God. Still a disgusting image, but at least James keeps some dignity this way.”

“Is this why he’s brought the lotion?”

-

He can hear them. He’s supposed to hear them, of course. But James’ focus is so profoundly attached to the outcome of the baguettes, that he leans himself on the table opposite the oven, sips his cooling coffee, and works from his phone the entire time it bakes. When the timer finally sounds, he calmly checks the colour through the oven door, again with the door open, and then removes the bread to cool. He sets a new timer on his phone, this one for ten minutes, and goes to make a fresh coffee.

James doesn’t threaten or warn, but nobody dares to enter the kitchen for the ten minutes. It’s like a police barrier has been strung across the back half of the studio, and work that should be started there is pushed back while the collective awaits a verdict. Even Ben appears, anxious to walk through a recipe the way he does, speaking out loud to himself the way he might on camera, but he is frozen at the smell of cooling baguette and retreats to join the small group assembled nearby.

James returns, not with a cup, but with a tray. At least a half dozen cups, the squat French enamel ones that nobody uses, are presented to the small group. Rich, cardamom-tinged café au laits for all, and it’s clear that nobody will dare to sweeten or adjust, or opt for tea instead.

He gives Ben the honour, which is kind of funny, but very sweet, in the casual way they all give Ebbers constant harassment but recognize that, ultimately, most of what they do is about gaining a measure of the warmth of his approval. James is perhaps the most open about it, and he hands one of the three perfect-looking baguettes to Ben, who tears off a piece.

“Oh,” Ben says. “That’s…”

It’s poorly formed, none of Ebbers’ usual camera-ready schoolboy enunciation. He chews through the piece of bread, even as he’s still handing the remainder down to the next in line.

Once everyone is inhaling the fresh scent of bread, and chewing through the perfectly finished crust, there’s a kind of vacuum sensation. This is where Ebbers asks about James’ technique, or offers his assessment. This is where he does the Ben thing and commentates exactly what the flavours are and how traditional or untraditional the final product is. He’ll compliment James’ effort, Ebbers truly appreciates good food, but in his inadvertent way he’ll condescend, by sanitizing the experience.

This is where Ebbers’ and James’ edges meet. Ben’s assessment will be erudite and wordy and then James will say “It’s _bread_” with the no fuss emphasis that they all adore. Somehow, “It’s bread” will be at once self-effacing and the absolute height of pride for James.

But strangely, no Ebbers commentary is forthcoming. James is practically beaming, which for him amounts to a subtle smirk and none of the wide mouth muppety smiling he does when he cheers on something someone else has done.

“And I made coffees.”

He announces it in his campy sing-song voice that never fails to cause an eruption of laughter, but everyone is still politely chewing and moaning appreciatively over the baguettes. Ben finally breaks the embargo and helps himself to a cup off the tray.

“Oh,” he says again, after his first sip. He looks from his cup to his handful of baguette, back to his cup. “That’s very…”

He eats again. Drinks. And like that, the spell is broken. James gets pat on the back, and a _cheers mate_ or two, as most of their assembled colleagues dissipate back into the typical morning din, until it’s just him and Ebbers, and their three most beloved goons.

“That was absolute perfection,” says Barry. “This might be the best thing you’ve ever baked.”

He looks from James to Ben and back as a smile creeps over his face.

“_And _you’ve broken Ebbers. Brilliant.”

“It really is lovely,” Mike says. “The bread, I mean.”

Such plain sincerity from him is disarmingly rare.

Ben remains uncharacteristically silent as he prods his glasses further up his nose. He puts his last bite of baguette into his mouth and makes a vaguely obscene sound in his throat. Barry and Jamie cringe. Mike gags. They’re all waiting on the Ebbers analysis, but still there’s nothing.

“He might have done the impossible,” says Jamie, turning a serious look towards James. “You may have struck Ebbers speechless.”

Mike holds up the remaining piece of baguette and squints at it with the scrutiny of a jewel appraiser.

“Or else he’s poisoned him,” he says thoughtfully, taking a cautious sniff. “What a way to go, though.”

Ebbers does one of his infuriatingly idiotic giggles and swipes the remaining baguette out of Mike’s hand.

“I think he likes it,” says Barry.

“Tell you what,” says Jamie, always determined to have the final word. “If I _were_ to have sexual relations with a baguette, that would absolutely be the one.”

Another wave of visible discomfort goes through the group.

“Stay the _hell_ away from my kitchen," says James.


End file.
